Made Thought: why do the world’s hottest designers need words?

What do you do when you’ve just won what is possibly the world’s most prestigious award for your designs?

If you’re London design agency Made Thought, who’d just won a Black Pencil at the 2015 D & AD awards, the answer was: invest in words.

Pictures can show the output, but they can’t explain the process.
Founders Ben and Paul, along with partner Nick, knew that they could now pick and choose projects. What they needed was a way to filter out prospective clients who weren’t prepared to accept their way of working. So they needed to explain how they thought and how they were different to other brand and design agencies.

Verbal Identity had worked alongside Made Thought on the successful Hunter relaunch, and a property redevelopment project. But through a series of conversations, lunches and a few cups of coffee, we helped the partners identify their unique way of working – which had been intuitive until then. Like in all the best stories, the breakthrough moment came with a diagram scribbled on the back of an envelope:

From this insight, we were able to help the partners describe their process, write more succinct copy for their website and prepare early-stage pitch presentations.

Better than we can say it.

Made Thought now has a robust pitching deck, a unique tone of voice and a website in development. They continue to attract the attention of clients and the design press and are able to talk about themselves with greater clarity: